Monday, April 25, 2016

The rock bottom criterion for a presidential candidate that Trump doesn't meet

There is one rock bottom criterion that should be applied to all presidential candidates. If you want to be president, you can be a Republican or Democrat, man or woman, Black or White, short or tall, old or young, rich or poor. But if you do not know what form of government we have, then you have no business running for the nation's highest office.

Donald Trump (and apparently the rest of his family) do not seem to have a clue that we live, not in a pure democracy, but in a Constitutional republic. They are apparently under the impression that no procedure for electing a president is legitimate unless the process for doing it is directly democratic in nature.

Hence Trump's criticism of the delegate process in the Republican (and Democratic) Party. Trump doesn't like the delegate apportionment process because when he wins a state, he doesn't get as many delegates as he thinks he should get. This is the guy who, for example, only got 45.7 percent of the popular vote but got 100 percent of the delegates?

When he got all these delegates, were the other candidates calling the system rigged? If he thinks the system is rigged because delegates aren't assigned in proportion to the popular vote, is he going to give those delegates to the other candidates in proportion to the percentage of votes they received?

Don't count on it.

Do these people not realize that when it comes to the general election, they will not be involved in such a process? Do they not realize that they will be elected, not directly by the people, but by delegates to the Electoral College? And that that's the way the founders set it up? And that the founders were justifiably suspicious of a pure democracy and that all the checks and balances that they put into our republican form of government were to avert the dangers that were implicit in the direct kind of democracy that Trump and Co. seem so enamored of?

And why in the world are supposed conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan backing Trump up on this?

I'm sorry, but if I'm given the choice between Jefferson and Trump, I'm picking Jefferson every time.

The problem (from Trump's perspective) is that he doesn't like the rules each state party has set up for selecting a president. And he's calling on the national Party to change the process.

Now let's get this clear: He's wanting to nationalize the presidential election process in the Republican Party. Is that a very conservative thing to do? Can we look for more of this approach when he becomes president? If he doesn't like things that states do, is he going to have the federal government force them to change it?

1 comment:

KyCobb
said...

Trump's complaining was good strategy since apparently most Republicans agree with him and he exceeded expectations for a change with his smashing victories yesterday. Cruz has to win Indiana next week to prevent Trump from securing the nomination. But even if he does, I'm coming to believe the GOP has no stomach for a convention fight to stop Trump, and that he will get enough unpledged delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot.